Introduction

Debates about authoritarian environmentalism need a firmer grounding in actually existing authoritarian environmental projects. The articles in this issue look across multiple dimensions of authoritarian environmental governance in East Asia to trace its contours and contingencies. We sum up the resulting insights in seven theses: Authoritarian environmental governance is not new. Evaluating outcomes is crucial—and fraught. We need to specify the “authoritarian” in authoritarian environmental governance. We need to recognize the breadth of environmental governance. Regimes differ from one another. Regimes change over time. And regimes work within the world-system. We need to be clear-eyed about how authoritarian regimes undertake environmental governance: attentive to its multifarious real-world manifestations and their practical and moral implications. To do this requires great care in assessing what is necessary and what is contingent in authoritarian environmental governance, and why.